As previously noted here, however, more than half of that $2.7 trillion comes from winding down spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as savings from interest payments on debt that the government won’t have to pay since it will be borrowing less money. Which makes the Reid plan a little less scary. But what about the other half? We may not know the final shape of a debt ceiling deal, but it’s safe to say that whatever happens, the ultimate agreement will include at least $1.2 trillion in the “discretionary spending cuts” that were agreed to by both sides during the negotiations led by Vice President Biden. And if you look at the legislative language for both the Reid and Boehner bills, they include very similar language on discretionary spending limits.

But here is where it gets tricky. Because the cuts are not exactly what most people would think of as “cuts.” Discretionary spending authority — the amount government is allowed to spend each year — actually rises over the next 10 years. Under the Boehner plan, the 2021 cap is $1.234 trillion, or about $190 billion more than authorized for 2012. Under the Reid plan discretionary spending is capped at $1.228 trillion in 2021.

So you might well ask, if the amount that Congress is allowed to spend goes up each year, how can either side claim savings of a trillion dollars or more?

The answer: It’s all about the baseline.

Budget planners assume a baseline in which spending rises at the same rate as inflation. Under the Biden framework, spending increases are capped at a rate less than inflation. The exact percentage isn’t spelled out in the legislation, but one report pegged the spending cap at two-thirds the normal inflation rate.

“Savings” are calculated by subtracting what the government will spend with the cap in place from what the government would have spent if spending rose at the full inflation rate. Voilà! Spending, overall, continues to rise, even as a trillion or more dollars are “saved.”

As I contemplated these numbers, I began to understand, for the first time, the psychology of a House Republican freshman. The closer you look at the U.S. federal budget process, the more it all seems like chicanery. But just to make sure, I called up the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities to see if I could get a little more clarity.

Jim Horney, CBPP’s vice president for federal fiscal policy, argued that it is still “appropriate” to call the cap on spending authority a “cut,” for the simple reason that if you hold spending increases to under the inflation rate, the amount of goods and services that can be purchased with that spending is going to fall, since costs will be rising at the full rate of inflation.

Here are some examples of programs that fall under the category of “discretionary spending”:

The single largest non-defense discretionary program is the Veteran’s Health Administration, which delivers free and low-cost health care to more than 8 million veterans. The National Institutes of Health is also entirely supported by discretionary funding. So are the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the whole federal prison system. Federal aid to local school districts comes from the discretionary pot, as does the budget for the Food and Drug Administration. The National Park System operates because of discretionary funding, which puts it in the same company as the United States Coast Guard, the Transportation Safety Administration, and the Farm Service Agency.

I know some of my readers would be delighted to see the FBI, DEA and maybe even the whole federal prison system abolished. But if spending authority rises at two-thirds the rate of inflation for the next 10 years, school districts will be able to afford less heating, national parks will be forced to reduce hours and services, the NIH will be able to fund less research and veterans will get less healthcare — depending on how congressional appropriators allocate funding under the caps.

So the cuts are real — for the recipients.

But they’re also a numbers game. There’s a huge difference between a balanced budget or serious long-term deficit reduction and tweaks to discretionary spending caps based on inflation adjustments. And the more one learns how Congress plays this game, the more one understands why House Republicans are unwilling to endorse any compromise. And that leads us to an ugly conclusion: The better they grasp the numbers, the more determined they might be to drive us toward default.

Never mind the fact that “trillions of dollars of cuts” in any accelerated time frame would “destroy jobs” much more efficiently than ending Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. And it’s not even worth pointing out, again, the Republican demagoguery that portrays the statutory end of the Bush tax cuts as wild tax hikes. The speech is most useful in its demonstration of classic Washington politician projectionism: Boehner did not mention under what time frame the cuts should take place nor did he specify where exactly the cuts should come. So who, precisely, is punting the tough questions to the future?

Boehner is bluffing, just as he bluffed, successfully, about the possibility of a government shutdown during the continuing resolution negotiations. But his hand is much weaker this time around, because as he himself has admitted, Congress can’t actually allow the U.S. to default on its obligations. That would be an act of astounding political irresponsibility and it’s just not going to happen. Boehner also knows as well as any politician that getting the cuts he wants, without any tax “hikes,” would require the kind of dramatic changes to Medicare that voters are extremely skeptical of. His obvious hope is that by threatening to hold the debt ceiling hostage, he can get Obama to meet him halfway or more, and thus insulate the Republican Party from the negative political impact of slashing the social welfare safety net at a time of high unemployment.

But bluffs only work when the opponent folds. In recent weeks, after pundits digested the stunning juxtaposition of Obama’s decision to release his long-form birth certificate with his White House Correspondent’s Dinner comedy shtick while the hunt for bin Laden was going on in the background, there’s been a lot of chatter about the president’s formidable “poker face.” But if the president is really that good at Texas hold ‘em, we’ve yet to see his skill displayed in the ongoing budget negotiations. That’s strange, because he definitely has his own cards to play.

Outsourced to Jonathan Chait:

It seems to me that Obama’s play here is clear: He needs to ask Boehner to spell out his demands. What’s the exact bill that Boehner demands as a condition for not crippling the U.S. economy? If he wants to make demands, he needs to write out those demands …

Allowing Boehner to simultaneously make exorbitant demands, refrain from spelling out those demands, and try to gain bipartisan cover for those demands would be a preposterously weak move by Obama. He can’t possibly be that weak a negotiator. Can he?

The media jumped on this quote immediately, turning the phrase “cowboy poetry festival” into a lightening rod phrase during these budget cut debates. And on the surface, it does seem like a ridiculous choice to single out: After all, whoever heard of cowboys being poets? Apparently the only cowboys who are poets are the gay ones, according to how many “Brokeback Mountain” references have been made by conservative blogs like MoonBattery  and Townhall, the latter of which quoted a new parody song by Mark Steyn in their analysis:

An ol’ cowpoke went ridin’ out one dark and windy day

Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way

When all at once he spied a posse from the GOP

A-hangin’ from that ol’ mesquite his fed’ral subsidy

His pen was still a-fire and he knew how to spell “git”

But an ol’ paint can’t outride a trillion-dollar deficit

If only Harry Reid can head ’em off at that there pass

‘Cuz he hasn’t finished paying off creative-writing class

Even Politico snickered, with a post titled, “Reid: Save Federal Funding for Cowboy Poets!“

But it’s Reid who may ultimately have the last laugh. After all, it’s not just Nevada who celebrates the poems of the Wild West: Texas has its own Cowboy Poetry Week, which Tea Party governor Rick Perry has given glowing proclamations for since 2006.

Perry, the man who once said:

“Texans…elect folks like me. You know the type, the kind of guy who goes jogging in the morning, packing a Ruger .380 with laser sights and loaded with hollow-point bullets, and shoots a coyote that is threatening his daughter’s dog.”

… is the same governor who just last month wrote this missive about his state’s own Cowboy Poetry Week:

Through cowboy poetry, we can gain insight into the emotions and thoughts of those who made history and those who continue to live and work in the cowboy culture today. Alternately silly, sardonic and tender, cowboy poetry gives us access to life on the range with all its accompanying excitement, hardships, and dreams.

To emphasize the importance of cowboy poetry to western culture and education campaign being conducted during the week of April. I encourage all Texans to participate and join in celebration. By encouraging a love of history, reading, and storytelling through cowboy poetry, we highlight the best of Texas.

So sneer at Harry Reid all you want, and keep making those “I don’t know how to quit you” jokes: You’re just proving his point. If cowboy poetry is supposedly so important to Rick Perry — the definition of a gun-slinging conservative Tea Partier — then by mocking its existence you’re just bring more daylight between John Boehner’s Washington Republicans and their own constituents, exposing the true hypocrisy in their leadership with the H.R. 1 bill.

At the time of this article, Governor Perry’s office has yet to answer our requests for a statement regarding his stance on the importance of cowboy poetry.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid said the short-term bill would win approval and be ready for President Barack Obama’s signature within 48 hours. “We’ll pass this and then look at funding the government on a long-term basis,” said the Nevada Democrat.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House, which earlier in the day called publicly for an interim measure of up to five weeks.

House Republicans were more eager to draw attention to the bill that was passing with the acquiescence of the White House and Democrats than to the challenge yet ahead.

“Now that congressional Democrats and the administration have expressed an openness for spending cuts, the momentum is there for a long-term measure that starts to finally get our fiscal house in order,” said Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

“Changing the culture of borrowing and spending in Washington is no small feat, but I am heartened by today’s action and it shows that Republicans have started to make the meaningful changes that voters called for in the last election.”

The GOP won control of the House and gained seats in the Senate last fall with the backing of tea party activists demanding deep cuts in federal spending and other steps to reduce the federal government.

On the House floor, Democrats sharply attacked Republicans in the run-up to the vote, but much of their criticism was aimed at an earlier $61 billion package of spending cuts that had cleared on a party-line vote.

“The sooner we can agree on a long-term package of smart cuts — not reckless, arbitrary, job-destroying cuts — the sooner we can stop funding the government in disruptive two-week increments that undermine efficiency and spread economic uncertainty,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, second-ranking in the Democratic leadership.

When it came time to vote, Democrats split, 104 in favor and 85 against. The leadership was similarly divided, Hoyer supporting the legislation and the party’s leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, opposed.

Republicans voted 231-6 in favor.

Hoyer’s reference to reckless cuts was a reach back to the earlier measure, written to satisfy 87 first-term conservative Republicans. It called for $61 billion in cuts while funding the government through Sept. 30, and would also have blocked enactment of proposed federal regulations on an array of private industries and prohibited the use of funds to implement the year-old health care law.

Confronted with a veto threat by Obama and strong opposition in the Senate, House Republicans announced quickly they would follow up with the interim two-week bill to avoid a shutdown while buying more time for compromise talks.

As such, the two-week measure is loaded with symbolism, although the $4 billion in cuts are not particularly controversial. About $2.7 billion was ticketed for earmarked projects, and the balance for education and other programs that Obama had proposed terminating or reducing next year.

The day’s events marked the culmination of a slow-motion retreat on the part of Senate Democrats, who had hoped to use the past few weeks to make the case that House Republicans are radicals bent on closing down the government.

As recently as 10 days ago, Senate Democrats supported a spending freeze at current levels through the end of the fiscal year, while making it known some members of the rank and file wanted to make cuts.

Last Thursday, as House Republicans made known their plan for the short-term bill with $4 billion in relatively non-controversial cuts, the Senate Democrats said they were opposed. They said they would agree to reductions only in a bill that carried the government through Sept. 30.

They switched signals again on Monday, as the White House expressed general support for immediate cuts as part of a bill to prevent any shutdown. Reid met privately with Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio during the day, and several officials said later Democrats floated a proposal for a five-week bill with $8 billion in cuts — less than the $2 billion-per-week level House Republicans want.

Privately, Senate Democratic officials expressed displeasure with the White House, saying the administration had remained above the fray in recent days.

Reid gave no hint of any unhappiness, though, telling reporters he expects Obama — who spoke with Boehner by telephone on Tuesday — to become more involved in the next round of negotiations.

“The president’s going to take this to the American people because the only message that we have from the Republicans is to wipe out programs that are so important to people, especially people who can’t help themselves, the middle class and other programs.”

“So, no, we feel we’re in a good position. I’m hopeful that we can work something out with the Republicans to get this done,” Reid said.